1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method and system for monitoring and managing a telephony system, and, in one embodiment, to a method and system for monitoring and managing a packet-based telephony system.
2. Discussion of the Background
Telephones are used everyday for communicating between remotely located parties. Customers have come to rely on the telephone's presence for emergencies and everyday communications, so customers do not understand when there are problems or outages in phone service. Thus, customers expect that telephony companies will manage their systems to avoid such problems and outages.
A new type of telephone standard, however, is gaining popularity that utilizes telephony over packet-based communications systems (e.g., using packet-based services over a cable modem) and provides a number of new challenges and opportunities in the areas of communications management and monitoring. In such systems, telephony equipment (e.g., equipment compatible with the DOCSIS cable standards) is connected at a customer premises and interacts with termination equipment at a telephony provider's premises. Such customer equipment utilizes digital, packet-switched communications rather that analog, circuit-switched communications (e.g., as used in POTS-style services). In such new systems, call monitoring is really a monitoring of network connections, and the provision of “telephony service” is really the provision of packet routing services.